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Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
ROY LICHTENSTEIN Moonscape.
Color screeprint on blue Rowlux, 1965. 506x608 mm; 20x24 inches, full margins. Artist's proof, aside from the edition of 200. Signed, dated "66" and inscribed "AP" in pencil, verso. Printed by Knickerbocker Machine and Foundry, Inc., New York. Published by Original Editions, New York. From 11 Pop Artists I. Corlett 37.
During the 1960s Roy Lichtenstein's (1923-1997) work evolved considerably from wild Abstract Expressionist-like drawings of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, encouraged by his son, to large and cleaning-looking canvases of commercial illustrations and comic strips. Leo Castelli began exhibiting his work at his New York gallery in 1961, when Lichtenstein was also teaching at Rutgers University, and, by the following year when his first solo exhibition opened at Castelli, he was enjoying great success, all of his work selling before the show even opened.
Lichtenstein is best known for his distinct style with the handmade replication of commercial techniques of reproduction, namely his imitation of Ben Day dots through frottage (rubbing) and pochoir (stenciling) or screenprinting. Before he even perfected these techniques in the late 1960s, he, like many other Pop artists, sought new applications and materials in art. Jasper Johns appropriated everyday found objects into his work; Robert Rauschenberg incorporated taxidermied animals; and Lichtenstein, the consummate and commercially trained graphic artist, printed on the multilayered plastic Rowlux. He embraced the plastic as a printing support from 1964-67. To him the desired moiré pattern (the iridescent and everchanging color tones) emulated in a very kitchy way the atomospheric effects of a land or seascape. Moonscape is his second ever print on Rowlux and his first on blue Rowlux, though he also utilized white, black and translucent Rowlux as well as plastic and foil in his mixed-media prints throughout the late 1960s. As a result of his first Rowlux landscapes, which are not derived from any printed source but rather invented, Lichtenstein was comissioned to create Ten Landscapes in 1967, his first solo print portfolio. Corlett 37.
